Join an Existing Smartsheet Plan at Your Organization

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You’ve tried Smartsheet, you like it, and you’re ready to get a license so that you can take advantage of all of the features Smartsheet has to offer. What’s the easiest way to do this? One quick way to get a license for Smartsheet is to request one for an account that already exists at your organization. You’ll do this by contacting the System Admin for the account directly.

Depending on how the System Admins at your organization have configured Smartsheet, you may be able to make this request right from the Smartsheet application.

NOTE: If you are the System Admin, you have full control over whether this feature is available for the Smartsheet accounts you manage. For more information, see Information for System Admins later in this article.

Request to Join an Existing Account

If a Smartsheet System Admin at your organization has enabled Account Discovery, you’ll be able to add yourself to an existing account using either of the following methods:

  • Respond to the "Join an Account" Message—If you receive a message that asks you whether you’d like to join an existing account, select the name of the account that you want to join and click Ask to Join.
     
  • Join via the Plan & Billing Info in Your Own Smartsheet Instance—Click here to open and use Account Discovery tool. Or, browse from Smartsheet. Start by selecting Account (in the upper-right corner of the Smartsheet window). From the left pane, select Plan & Billing Info, and click Join an Account.

Fill out the information in the request and click Send.

That’s it! You’ve done your part, your System Admin will do the rest. You’ll know you’ve been successful when you receive an email message stating that the System Admin would like to add you to the account.

Information for System Admins

Account Discovery makes it much easier for you to add people to your account and manage the users in your organization.

People at your organization who use Smartsheet as free collaborators, or who are trying it out, will have visibility into which Smartsheet accounts from your organization are available for them to join. They’ll easily be able to request a license from you, and you can approve with one click directly from your email.

In order to allow people at your organization to discover your account and request a license to it, you and your account must meet the following criteria:

  • You must be a System Admin with a paid license to the account.
  • The account must use a valid domain address that your organization owns—addresses that use common Internet Service Provider (ISP) domains such as @gmail.com don’t qualify.
  • The domain used with any plan you manage must not have User Auto Provisioning enabled. For more information, see Automatically Add Users to an Enterprise Account with User Auto Provisioning.

Upgrade a User and Grant Them a License

With the Account Discovery feature enabled, you’ll likely start seeing requests from people at your organization asking to be added to your Smartsheet account. You’ll receive requests via email with text similar to the following: Please add me as a licensed user in the account name account.

Note that three email messages will be sent: one is sent immediately, one is sent after 48 hours, and one is sent 10 days after the request.

When you receive a message of this type, click Add to Account to go to the Account Administration form—from there, you’ll be able to grant a license to them and configure their account.

Enable or Disable Account Discovery

To enable or disable account discovery:

  1. Select Account (in the upper-right corner of the Smartsheet window) > Account Admin > Account Settings.
  2. Click Edit next to Account Discovery. Verify that Enabled is checked and click Save (uncheck the box to disable this feature).

TIP: If you enable this feature, make sure that your account name clearly reflects the department or group name that owns it. For example, if you are a Smartsheet SysAmin for an account used by the Marketing department at MBF Corp., an account name of MBF Marketing will help others in your organization better distinguish it from, say, the Accounting department at MBF Corp.

For information about how to update your Smartsheet account name, see Changing the Main Contact & Account Name.

Troubleshooting Admin Issues with Account Discovery

If you receive requests from people who you believe should not be requesting access to your account, please contact our Support team.